all things baked, and how to make them

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First bake: spiced honey cake

There isn’t anything much more comforting than a spiced cake, especially on a dreary day or when you’re simply feeling a little under the weather. This recipe from Asda magazine caught my eye not just because of the spices, but also due to its use of honey – yet another baking ingredient I adore!

It’s a fairly simple cake to make; the wet and dry ingredients are mixed separately, then there’s the fun bit where you stir some bircarbonate of soda into orange juice and watch it fizz up! The mix ends up being rather runny (see pic below), but it does firm up in the oven.

Spiced honey cake mix

The cake was baked to perfection in 45 minutes. I managed to forget to retain a tablespoon of the orange juice for the icing, so I used a splash of syrup from a jar of stem ginger, a little orange blossom honey and some water instead. The recipe says to drizzle the icing over the cooled cake, which I did in careful diagonal lines to begin with, but then ended up accidentally splashing a fair bit in the middle of it, so just drizzled the rest over any old how – hence the messy appearance!

The finished cake is rather gingerbread-y in texture, but still sufficiently soft enough to be classified as a cake. It’s wonderfully light – there’s no butter in this recipe, just sunflower oil. The spice flavour is nice and strong, but doesn’t overpower the honey.

All in all, this is an excellent cake and one I would make again. It’s highly recommended if you too love spiced cakes, and also if you’re trying to reduce your fat intake – there’s only 4.1g of fat (including 0.6g of saturated fat) and 5 WeightWatchers ProPoints per piece! So go ahead and treat yourself without feeling guilty…

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, mixed spice, ginger and cinnamon together in a bowl. Stir in the caster sugar.

3. In another bowl, beat the honey, oil, eggs and zest. Stir into the flour mixture.

4. Stir the bicarbonate of soda into the orange juice. It will start to fizz up. Immediately stir into the cake mixture until evenly mixed. Pour into the tin – it’s a very runny mixture but firms up when cooked.

5. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top springs back when lightly pressed. Cool on a wire rack.

6. Mix the icing sugar with the extra orange juice, then drizzle on top of the cake. Cut into 16 squares.

Thank you so much for posting this. I saw the recipe in the Asda magazine and promised to make it for my lactose-intolerant friend. I then managed to lose the recipe and searched online in a bit of a panic. I’ll be able to make it for her this weekend after all. Brilliant!